Baron of Nightmares (Patreon)

Ming limped forwards, through the Hall of Empty Whispers, blood leaking from her mutilated arm. When she stumbled, almost falling flat on her face, she considered turning around or ascending.

The shadows in the hall around her echoed, whispering for her to surrender. They soaked into her mind, and she was forced to resist them with raw effort of will. 

When she was fourth gate, her carefully handcrafted blueprint would allow her silver blades to cut into the liminal dreams, but as a mere peak second realm, she was too weak. 

Too weak.

Too weak.

Too weak.

The thought pounded in her head as yin and dream chi soaked into her. 

There she stood, five years old. A vong hồn, angered from the lack of respect paid, had slunk from the graveyard to kill and eat people, and now it scrabbled at the doors to her house.

The reason for the lack of respect was simple, though. They hadn’t grown enough food to even feed all of them, not with the new taxes that the Windrider imposed. They’d had too few working the fields after the demands for more soldiers to quash brewing dissent in Taozhu. 

Her father, a second realm guardian cultivator, and the strongest left in the village, tensed, watching as the thing scrabbled at their door. The peachwood sword he held in his single remaining hand shook slightly with each echoing scrape. 

“Go back to your room, my little kabocha,” her father said. “It will be o–”

The protective formations on the door flashed, then the entire thing exploded. The vong hồn rushed into the room and took her father by his throat. His lifeblood siphoned away into the hungry spirit, and the sword fell to the floor. 

Ming let out a scream and rushed for the sword. She scooped it up and launched herself at the hungry ghost.

The spirit knew. Somehow, despite the arts her father worked on her, it knew where she was. It spun and lazily struck her wrist. She dropped the enchanted peachwood blade, it reached out, and claws tore through her chest. 

No.

That was not what had happened, and the horrible powers in this place would not make it so. Ming grit her teeth, planted her feet within her dream self, and shoved herself off the things’ claws.  Even with the gaping chest wound, she grabbed the sword and drove it into the spirit’s chest. The enchantments for binding a spirit inside that her father had lain flashed, but in this dream, they were too weak. The spirit grimaced in pain, but was fine a moment later.

The vong hồn leapt at her, tearing her left arm off. If she’d been grown, she could have woven out of the way and struck twice in the gaps, but her five year old self was soft and weak. She stabbed at the thing’s chest again, drawing ectoplasmic power from it. It took an eye in exchange. 

Slowly, she and the vong hồn hacked one another apart, until she managed to cut its head off and stagger out from her childhood home. 

Her eyes snapped open in her real, adult body again, and she felt the wounds from the dream fade… mostly. Not entirely. She wasn’t entirely sure of the mechanics behind it, but some of the injuries carried over into her real body. She felt her chest ache as the wound from where the vong hồn had stabbed her became real, and blood leaked from it. 

A part of her wondered if she might have been better off making healing fit in the lowest parts of her blueprint, but she ignored it as she continued to limp forward, shoving her hand into the spatial bag tied at her side, pulling a seven-flower healing spell from within and popping it in her mouth. The healing jing within the pill rushed through her body, patching up the wounds, and she checked her chi reserves. 

The biggest advantage of her design’s reliance on single-art realms and full-realm arts was that she should have an abundance of chi at all times. Her cultivation technique, which she’d cobbled together from the scrolls in the ashes of her village, churned, intensifying the power of her chi further, pushing against the walls and expanding it to grant her more, which ought to have made it further impossible to run dry on power. 

But she was running low anyhow. She could feed her Swiftfoot art for a while, but her Silver Blades only had one or two blades left.

She’d passed through the first four rooms, which was further than most managed to get, but the hall seemed endless. She needed more power, to take the elixirs she had prepared to overflow her chi and break through. It would restore her chi entirely, and the intensity from reaching the energy-expert stage would be enough to let her cut through any problems in her way. 

But that would worsen the rewards. The Baron of Nightmares, who had died and created this trial some fifty years ago, had seen to that. 

She put a hand on the hilt of the doyen blade, her new growth item, as she fought back the nightmares, walking to the next door and throwing it open. Thus far, she had claimed the reward orbs from the hall, the bedroom, the bathroom, and the library. 

This next room opened on a dining hall, filled with heavenly smelling food. Ming ignored it. Everything in the Hall of Empty Whispers was going to try to break her mind and cast her out, and she had no doubt this was the same. 

Instead she drew her sword. It hummed, its enchantments connecting themselves to her spirit and channeling her spellcraft within itself. The blade grew lighter and faster from her speed spells, taking on a deadly edge from her Silver Blade spell and its cutting enhancing full-realm art, powered entirely without her need. 

She lashed out and cut the table in half. The wood on the table began to warp, crack, and flake, and a massive construct began to assemble itself. The ceramic plates flew and melted into armor plating, the utensils fusing into a blade, and the body swung a blade at her. She leapt back, muscles screaming in pain. She ignored it. Pain was just pain. 

She vaulted over the swing of the table construct’s fist, leaving a thin cut that nevertheless dug into the wood of the creature. She was landing then, and dove between the construct’s feet, driving her blade up at where she suspected its formation-heart was, but while the thick plating cracked, it–

A whisper from the Nascent Truth of Combat. She threw herself back, rolling out of the way as its foot moved faster than something of its size should be able to, then sprung to her feet and lunged for the lower back of the thing. A long, extending lunge-cut, one that threw everything into the blow. As she did, she burned some of her chi to run Silver Blades through the Doyen Blade, empowering the already connected and layered art and enchantment. She wrapped herself, the lunge, the blade, the art, and the enchantments all in the resonant power she wielded. 

The blade blazed with silver light so bright that it almost hurt the eyes to look at and drove through the back of the construct, cutting through where the groin would be on a human, then slicing upwards. With a chiming note, the power rippled upwards, splitting the construct in half. 

The chi in her first realm that powered the Silver Blades spell ran dry, but she didn’t stop. Even without spending chi, the enforced enchantments cut through the wood. She hacked and sliced until it finally fell apart into bits, then collected the smooth glass ball of darkness that was the reward for the room, and slid it into the bag at her side. 

She turned and began to limp down the hall. She was bleeding again. When had that happened? The construct must have scraped her somewhere in the rain of blows that had split it apart. 

Again, Ming was assaulted by nightmares. 

Again, Ming fought through them. 

Her time in a village slowly falling apart, with its guardian gone, spirit beasts not held back by the army. 

She cut her way through a plant monster in an attached greenhouse, taking injuries to her leg that cut down on her ability to do acrobatics. 

The village being burned to the ground when she was eleven and an underwater-burning crocodile had attacked the town, and the burns she’d suffered from attempting to slay the third realm monster. How she’d begun to hear the beat of combat that day, and began practicing endlessly. Every day as she moved from town to town, she ran drills in her mind, and at night, practiced with whatever she could find. 

She cut her way through a fire elemental in the kitchens, suffering burns to her sword arm that forced her to switch to her non-dominant arm.

Her years in the army, from thirteen to seventeen, thanks to her skills as a swordswoman. The abuse her instructors had laid on her, in many ways, the jeering. The death of bandits. The bullet wounds from those too young, too weak, or too afraid to cultivate, healed by army soldiers. Finally awakening her dantien and ‘accidentally’ killing the  worst of her superiors who had abused her. 

She cut her way through a ballroom against a glass fox creature whose chi felt entirely wrong, too much of everything at once. How something was so much of everything went beyond her, and it left her with sharp glass vines inside her dantien’s inner world, which took effort and time to cut away. Time and effort that she couldn’t afford to spend, forcing her to march. 

The struggle of getting a permit to leave the country, only to be denied. A cultivator of her aptitude should join the Whistling Winds Sect, one of the Great Sects that paid respects to Central Daocheng. After all, the Windrider was the Patriarch of the sect, and his voice was one who helped set the tax and laws of the nation itself. He had become her enemy, the one who had taken her father, burned her village, and now sought to trap her further in his arms. 

She cut her way through the wine cellar, where a massive slime that could fuse back together after she cut it forced her to carve it like a butcher with every bit of speed, slicing away chunks and throwing it to the side, and left, shirt riddled with holes, her chest burnt with acid where it dropped through. 

On and on she went. Most people cleared three rooms, according to the rumors she had heard. The exceptional cleared a dozen, perhaps less, before they were forced to turn back. 

When she’d entered the trial, Ming thought she would not be satisfied until she had cleared through all twenty-eight rooms, but after the seventeenth, she found her conviction tested again. She was barely dragging herself along, with one arm useless, one leg useless, the other leg barely able to move at all, but she threw herself into the home gymnasium anyways. 

The reflection of herself within that room shattered the bones of her sword arm, snapped her operational arm, and stood over herself, taunting. 

“You’re so pathetic,” the other version of her taunted, shaking her head. “You can’t even get through a trial designed for second gate mages. How will you kill a Patriarch?” 

Ming gritted her teeth and felt for her chi reserves. 

Nothing. 

Her arms and legs were broken and bloody, her chi was dry, and her remaining arts were out, but this version of her continued to mock and jab. 

Ming growled, thrashed her body over to the fallen Doyen blade, then launched herself up with core strength and what little effort she could expend with her shattered body. In truth, if not for the support of the Nascent Truth of Combat, she couldn’t have done it. 

But she caught herself by surprise, and clutching the sword in her mouth, drove it through her echo’s flesh. 

As she dissolved and formed one last orb, Ming surrendered and cracked the final orb. 

Darkness swept over her, and she appeared elsewhere. This was another dream-realm, yet in this one, she was whole. No, more than that, she was healthier than she had ever been before. 

Within this dream realm there was a shallow basin, carved of obsidian, set with a ring of twenty eight slots to insert the glass spheres. An image of the Baron of Nightmares appeared, woven of dream chi. He was a handsome looking man in his thirties, with bright pink eyes, and fishlike scales on his hands.

“You, who have surrendered, will never claim my greatest gifts,” he said. “Yet you have seen some success. Place your orbs upon the basin.” 

Ming slotted them into place, one by one. With each sphere, a droplet of a void-black elixir filled the basin. 

“Drink, disciple of the Empty Whispers, and feel the power of the void between the stars.” 

Ming lowered her head into the basin and allowed the drops to slide into her dantien, where she buried them deep within her spirit. She felt her power surge upwards, expanding out. It didn’t become more intense, the connections between her spells did not deepen, yet her spells seemed… vaster. Longer lasting. The cost to forge her blades was lower and spread over more area, because she wanted them to be, and so they were. Just as the void stretched forever, so too would her spells. Her speed could cover more ground in less time. 

“For passing through ten rooms, you are granted a refinement,” the Baron said. “Place an item within the basin, and it will grow with you, or if it is already a growth item, it will allow you to consume the abilities of a third gate item and integrate its effects.” 

Ming placed the Doyen Blade within the altar and watched more black elixir rush through it, opening a space for it to consume another blade. 

“And for passing fifteen rooms, I grant you the treasure of empty mind. Place your head within the basin.” 

Ming did, and felt a mental enhancement power rush into her. It bound itself into her body, a black scar forming on her scalp, hidden by her hair. She found her thoughts running smoother, but more importantly, all of her fears and nightmares collected themselves inside the empty mind.

Now, when someone sought to reach into her mind, they would find themselves in her empty mind instead, a false mind of insecurities and doubts that would slide away mental invasion. 

“Go now, disciple of the university, and know that you are forever in the debt of the Baron of Nightmares.”